


Midnight Coward

by docnoctem



Category: Gorillaz
Genre: Internalized Homophobia, M/M, in spades, is there a term for ''smut that really isn't titillating''?, sad men with sad lives: the ongoing saga, these guys just don't know what they're on about, warning for some rude comments about giada de laurentiis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-13 11:26:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16891710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/docnoctem/pseuds/docnoctem
Summary: A snapshot of two people who don’t say what they want and don’t want what they say.





	Midnight Coward

The room features two twin beds covered by coarse and unattractive reddish-brown blankets. There’s an old CRT television in front of the one nearest the doorless bathroom, flickering but muted, and roughly half of the space is lit from the far corner by a lamp standing a touch taller than Murdoc. It’s not much to look at, but they’ve booked seedier rooms on tour before—not management, of course, not officially. They’re officially booked an hour down the road in suites sporting balconies with higher square footage than the whole of this room. They’d taken separate cabs down the metropolitan Yellowbrick road until it turned a decidedly dodgy grey, and Stuart had paid in cash with an expired passport that didn’t yet have his legal stage name printed on it.

He never opts for one larger bed, selecting the two singles even though by all the records he’s checking in alone. Murdoc can feel his knees testing the edges of the mattress from his straddling position, and he’s not young enough to be certain they’ll still be in full form by morning. Stuart’s sitting with his back against the headboard but he’s too tall for it by a wide margin, the low top of the wooden frame forcing him to arch his hips forward, his head lolling back to touch the wall. Stu grouses quietly and shifts underneath him with some difficulty, and the feeling of his jeans scratching Murdoc’s bare skin isn’t ideal, but there’s a part of him that enjoys the discomfort, enjoys being denied. Murdoc’s fingers dig at the other’s chest—drumming against his sternum, swiping over his nipples, tracing his collarbones—but Stu doesn’t really respond in earnest. The hands sat still on his waist are far more testing and hesitant than they should be by now. He doesn’t know if that’s ever going to change.

Murdoc dips his head down to kiss him, letting Stu set a rough and sloppy rhythm. Once his tongue’s threatened to draw blood from scraping hard enough against his canines (a proper kiss, in his books) they pull back just enough to breathe into each other. Murdoc’s hands fall to his belt, but Stuart tenses so starkly that Murdoc can see his fairly unremarkable stomach muscles tighten under the surface. Stu swallows hard and paints some shade of apology over his face before looking past him, and Murdoc doesn’t really need to be asked. Lifting up off his lap, he swings one knee over his narrow hips and turns around, resettling into a straddle facing away from the man too jittery for eye contact.

Stuart’s hands find his back then, a bit less reluctant than before. He can feel the stiffness slowly easing from the fingers ranking down his shoulder blades, counting the notches of his spine, smoothing across the blurry black lines of his oldest tattoos. Anticipation prickles Murdoc’s skin in the trail of his touches. Stu brings his hands together at the wrist and they flatten against the small of his back, the prodding of his knobby joints prominent and more teasing than he knows. His outrageous reach is nearly enough to span Murdoc’s lower back, and he stares at the colors illuminating the other side of the room to keep from buckling at that knowledge.

Giada De Laurentiis is smiling on the telly with what appears to be three rows of teeth. She’s cooked a pasta dish, and it must’ve come out nicely based on the downright lewd faces her guests are making. There’s a handsome young couple sat at the overly-long outdoor table, and the presumed wife reaches up teasingly to point out the perfectly placed spot of beet-red sauce on her husband’s cheek. It all looks tremendously staged, but sweetly so, at least. Murdoc wonders idly whether Giada’s a good shag—a bit petite for his taste, but she seems suitably controlling, and he likes the potential of her too-many teeth.

He’s brought back by Stu’s hands stalling just above his arse and the sound of his voice, quiet and questioning. “What do you…?”

Murdoc doesn’t look back at him. He looks at his feet, seeming every bit as long and flat as those twatty racquetball snow-shoes hanging off the edge of the bed. He looks at the clothes he’d discarded in a black pile on the floor, not strewn about but simply shucked off where he stood. He looks at Stu’s ugly orange t-shirt a few feet away, just crumpled enough to slightly obscure the words Sunk Cost Coastal Banking written in blocky letters across the front—it’s the only piece of clothing Stu’s lost yet.

He directs his reply at the singular shirt. “What d’you?”

Stu’s loud nasally breathing starts to slow, sounding more measured and unnatural. His hands glide fully over the curve of Murdoc’s backside and then fall away completely, leaving the other to flutter his eyes shut only briefly before rolling forward again. Stuart lightly grips his ankles instead, and Murdoc can feel that his tremors haven’t left.

Stu’s voice comes back a full octave lower than normal.

“Show me.”

It’s raw, as if the words were seeping their way out of him, and it’s a convincing impression of confidence—anyone except Murdoc would’ve believed it. He knows Stuart’s reservations well enough to see past his little rounds of Who Am I Really?, but the attempt still makes him quiver. Murdoc reaches a hand around to his own backside, flushed heat radiating from every inch of his skin, and grips one fleshy cheek. He feels absolutely ridiculous as he pulls at it, spreading his arse on one side and further exposing himself. Stuart’s hand brushes against the other cheek and travels up his back, stopping gingerly in the valley of his shoulder blades—then firmly pushing him forward.

Murdoc braces his hands on either side of Stu’s legs, bracketing around his calves as he bends over and feeling twice as exposed as he had a moment ago, cock bobbing against his stomach in response. He hears his pulse thrumming in his ears, drowning Stu’s breath out entirely. He wonders with a pleasantly embarrassed knot in his gut if Stu’s just stopped breathing altogether.

After a few agonizing moments he feels the pad of Stu’s thumb—round, rough, and knobbed—grazing over his arsehole. There’s a barely-there pressure and then it’s gone, and he keens almost immediately at the loss of the dry touch. He hears the scratchy rustle of Stu’s trousers, the sound practically choral to his ears; he has to tamper his hope at the movement of the man’s lanky legs beneath him working his jeans down. The touch of his thumb returns, barely damp now from a swipe across his tongue, pressing against the side of his rim and _dragging_ , not opening him up but simply smoothing and spreading the tightly bunched skin. Stu’s breath begins to override Murdoc’s pulse again, the ragged quality to it sending waves of arousal through him. The older can _feel_ his eyes boring into him, and it’s too much. Murdoc lowers his head to watch between his legs, and all but faints at the image of Stuart’s big hand wrapped around his own cock. He can see him squeezing tight at the base while Murdoc feels his thumb prodding apart his knots, and the pure eroticism of it is enough to drive him mad.

Stu’s fist starts pumping his shaft, thick knuckles knocking up against the swollen head, his grip faltering and fondling in accordance to Murdoc’s trembles and grunts. As sweat builds and transfers between them, Stu loses traction against his hole; each time he begins to slide, Stu returns and presses harder still, and Murdoc’s skin burns in his wake. He feels emptier than he can stand when a bead of sweat runs all the way down the cleft of his arse and drips to Stuart’s cock, and he _has_ to move his hips, he has to buck and arch and groan. Stu hisses a curse at that and finally uses the building wetness to push inside, just to the first knuckle, and hook his thumb in. The stretch is so slight that it’s worse than nothing at all, but the sight of Stu’s cock throbbing, the sound of his panting, the feel of his bottomless black gaze focused somewhere so hidden, so intimate, made an obscene spectacle of for his scrutiny—it’s enough to get him there, he knows. Apparently it’s enough for Stu as well, his hand clutching hard to Murdoc's backside and thumb crooking almost enough to be the sort of painful he’d like, and Stuart comes with a cracked gasp there for him on the dingy motel bed.

Murdoc drops his face against the duvet and twists his shoulders sideways so he’s pressing one side of his collar heavily into the bed, and he knows his neck’ll fare even worse than his knees tomorrow. He snakes a hand down to his crotch without ceremony and begins to masturbate, eyes trained where Stu’s large bony hand is lying limply between his quivering, pinkish thigh and his deflating cock. At his age, his stamina in chasing his edge is less of a distance sprinter’s and more of a desperate smoker’s, winded but eager while stumbling from the back of the tram to the street for a cigarette. Stuart’s breath audibly hitches and his fingers twitch and rub nervous patterns into his inner thigh, and it prompts a shiver from his core that Murdoc fails to suppress. As his climax tightens in his groin, his eyes screw shut and he can feel himself clench and unclench, spread and held aloft to watch; he comes to the shuddering whimper the sight draws from Stu.

He cranes his neck forward again, his shoulders coming to rest against the bed. The light from the telly’s flashing blue and white behind his eyelids. He knows he’s still posed with his arse on display and his heart’s not slowing any as the sweat starts to chill on his skin.

Murdoc tentatively raises himself back to his kneeling position and then slides his legs forward, sitting himself on Stu’s knees as he catches his breath. Stu grunts in displeasure and grabs at his hips to move him off, but his body’s still spent with orgasm and his already-reedy arms can hardly lift the other man at all. He looks pityingly over his shoulder.

“Careful, gonna hurt yourself.”

“M’gonna hurt  _you_.” Stu spits back, but he’s already given up and is fumbling for his phone on the nightstand.

“I wish you would.” Murdoc purrs jokingly, but it doesn’t quite land. The air’s gotten too thick to laugh, and they both know it’s the most honest either of them have been tonight.

Color rises to Murdoc’s face at the silence. He clears his throat and moves to stand, his legs slightly shaky. Turning back, he catches Stu grimacing at the wet stains they’ve added to an assuredly well-stained bed before finding his footing and barely managing to avoid tripping over his half-removed trousers. He tucks himself back into his briefs and fastens the button of his jeans, fly still folded open to give the look an appropriate level of class. Stu seems to consider Murdoc regretfully and then sinks onto the other mattress, black eyes going heavy-lidded while he considers his hands instead.

After an uncomfortably long pause, during which Murdoc unearths his garish leopard-print pants from his clothing pile and pulls them on, Stu finally mutters “I just… need some time.” He checks his phone on the nightstand again to be sure there’s no one looking for them before continuing. “Y’know that I… I don’t really… I haven’t. That’s all, I just… haven’t.”

Murdoc rummages for his pack of Lucky Lungs and a lighter from his jacket pocket and then heads for the door.

“You’re going back already?” Stu asks, something like guilt under his voice. It’s funny, with his mile-long body hunched over the bed, oversized hands bigger than the Bible in the drawer, that he still has the capacity to sound that small. Murdoc thinks it’s a little rich of him to ask that when he’s the one sat claiming the spunk-free bed.

“Stu, I’m in my pants, I haven’t even got shoes on. Just going for a fag.” Murdoc says slowly, making sure to give him an exaggeratedly wide-eyed look to compensate for the mocking eyebrow movement hidden under his fringe.

He slides out the door before Stu can tell him to sod off in embarrassment at his absentmindedness. They’re on the second floor, with the outdoor hallway affording him a gorgeous scenic view of the barren car park. He counts four cars in the lot right now and entertains some meaningless but vulgar thoughts about how near to where he’s just come any of their drivers are sleeping.

Bringing the pack up to his lips, he pulls a cigarette out and lights it, inhaling until a decent amount of ash forms. He breathes out shallowly through his nose, the thin smoke dancing and dissipating as it spills over his chin.

It’s been over a year since he first jerked Stuart off in an en-suite bathroom on tour—with a passing bitterness he wonders how much more time he’ll need to just stuff his cock in Murdoc, but he knows that after all he’s put the other through in the name of his ego, of his limitations, of the pit deep down in him determined to swallow the tallest, brightest thing it could, it really isn’t his place to decide what Stu’s allowed to need. By rights he shouldn’t be in the room behind him at all. That reminder grounds him again and he takes a deeper pull from his cigarette as he leans over the railing, tapping the tip and watching the ash flit down and away.

If he’s waiting another ten years with Stuart’s tongue against his teeth and a knuckle or two buried in him, he’s doing a goddamned bag-and-a-half better than the ten years he’d waited prior. He certainly hasn’t got any other prospects, hasn’t got any other paths to follow; he hasn’t had any but one since the late nineties. The thought makes him want to both hide a private smile and be sick in his mouth.

He idles in the corridor a while longer, finishing his cigarette and flicking the end north, in the direction of the stunning suites they’re meant to be staying in tonight, but the gentle evening wind rolls it more south down the dim lot.

When he returns to the room, he spares a disgusted glance at the soiled bed by the door, then looks to Stuart. He’s sat up on the other bed staring blankly at the still-silent telly, his phone evidently having gone dark in his hand. After pausing in consideration, he climbs onto the narrow bed next to him, pushing Stu closer to the far wall. The other lets out a surprised cry of protest.

“Oh come off it, as if you can’t fold in. You’re obviously banking on being some sort of eye candy, the least you can do is not make me sit in a cold puddle of your misspent passion.”

Stu pulls a nauseated face but laughs all the same, loud and immature in a way that chuffs Murdoc.

He looks ahead to see Giada waving cordially to the cameras, credits fading in and out over the image, and the white text still isn’t as white as her many teeth.

“D’you reckon Giada’s a biter? She’s got promise, what with the maw and all.” Murdoc asks, more to amuse himself than to hear the answer.

“I’ve heard she’s a nightmare—figures you’d fancy her. I think I’d pop by Aarti’s Party first, thanks.”

“Not bad. Open to crashers?” Stu hums noncommittally. “Invite a cameraman and make it a Party of Five then?”

“…Has Neve got a cooking show? Can I change my answer?”

Murdoc huffs a low laugh through his nose, settling in. Advertisements soundlessly creep by for another minute or two.

“…Y’know, it’s pretty obvious you’re miffed when you bother stepping out of a motel room this rank to smoke. Makes you look like a bit of a tosser leavin’ me in here.” Stu says evenly, looking straight ahead at the quieted screen. Murdoc winces because it’s true.

“Maybe I’ve got a little thing called respect for this fine establishment.” He shrugs, the bare skin of his shoulder brushing against Stu’s own.

“You can be miffed if y’want to be, alright? I know—I know you wanted me to… and I couldn’t.”

“It’s fine, Stu, fuck’s sake…” Murdoc grumbles, voice warbling at the end with discomfort. Stuart frowns and knocks his foot into Murdoc’s smaller one with a little too much force.

“Fuck off, I’m jus’ trying to talk to you. If you’re tired of not getting a proper buggering or whatever, go on and say so.”

“I mean, am I getting tired of begging for your golden-bloody-cock and humiliating myself?” Stuart raises an eyebrow in disbelief, expression unimpressed as he looks down to Murdoc’s crotch, as if he’s expecting him to be at half-mast again from the suggestion. Murdoc shoots him a filthy grin at that. “Not really, no.”

Stu chews over his words a moment longer before admitting “I jus’ don’t… _get_ why you want it.”

Murdoc isn’t exactly gagging to explain himself either, nor does he even think he could—he’s not sure he’s ever been especially privy to the particulars of his head’s relationship to his body.

He examines his nailbeds in a bid to scale back his sincerity in asking “Is that what’s putting you off? You don’t understand it?”

“No. I didn’t understand why my girlfriend in year ten wanted it either, didn’t stop me dropping my trousers in the guestroom my granddad died in. Think I was finished before we’d started.” Stu recalls with a chuckle.

He brings the knee between them to a bend, putting something of a wall up though Murdoc very much doubts he knows he’s doing it. He drums the pads of his fingers over the denim, and Murdoc would love to rip the piss out of how pathetic that story is but he’d love to feel those calluses hooked over the space behind his molars more, and he suspects that “pathetic” looks well charming in calligraphy on the doormat of his glass house.

Stu distantly continues, “Didn’t question her. Don’t question groupies either.” His mouth tugs and releases at the edge and his voice softens in the wrong way. “But you’re… it’s… it’s just different.”

Murdoc knows better than to waste his breath asking why. The telling view looking down at his unshapely torso and his ropy thighs still cool with sweat is interspersed with snapshots of his Astra’s tire marks, of one overblown pupil rolling back and forth in an unflinching socket, of blood and teeth spat on the pavement, of his mouth forming around the vowels in a half-dozen slurs, of Paula’s mouth forming around _him_ , of hands clawing at each other’s throats, of bottles breaking against walls long burned down, of an abandoned island drifting and rotting out there somewhere with plastic pink shores—

—and yeah, it is different.

“S’fine.” Murdoc murmurs.

“Is it?” Stuart asks quietly.

In the vast and noble tradition of avoidance, Murdoc fishes the remote off the nightstand and turns the volume back on. There’s an infomercial playing for a device that cuts vegetables into pasta-like spirals. Murdoc drops the controller in his bedmate’s lap to a noise of disinterest. The pitchman eventually pulls a nice fit girl over to test the product, but she’s offset by the too-dazzling sound effects playing over the unappetizing green and greener results. After a nervous beat, Murdoc slides down the bed enough to lean his head against Stu’s upper arm.

Twenty minutes in, he’s nearly nodded off when Stuart’s hand comes to rest on his leg and he feels those long, long fingers curl over the back of his knee.

**Author's Note:**

> I dropped the ball on writing something happier this time... sorry! Come pal around at tothedarkdarkseas.tumblr.com, things are generally more light-hearted there.


End file.
